Cooking Up a Great Workplace: Employee Experience in Foodservice w/ Alison Lambert (Director of Engagement & Insights, Eurest)

Have you ever had two leaders telling you two different things that are in direct opposition to each other? It’s a common dish served in foodservice, where franchised locations, channel teams or contracted locations mean that a worker might suddenly feel like they’re sandwiched between more than one boss.

And that disjointed experience makes it hard to rally employees around a consistent and engaging brand mission that enables and empowers employees to deliver guest experiences that drive loyalty and revenue.

Enter Eurest USA, a contract foodservice company within Compass Group that's developed an award-winning recipe for delivering memorable food and guest experiences across 48 states and a wide range of restaurants and brands.

Alison Lambert, Director of Engagement & Insights at Eurest, joined ITK host JD Dillon to share how the organization tackles the meaty challenge of ensuring its 16K+ team members are empowered to deliver a meaningful, consistent guest experience while connected to the same company-wide goals.

• Learn more about Eurest - Eurest-USA.com
• Follow Eurest on Instagram - instagram.com/eurestusa
• Support Alison’s charity of choice, Best Buddies International - bestbuddies.org
• Get a copy of JD’s book, The Modern Learning Ecosystem - jdwroteabook.com

For more about why Axonify is the essential employee enablement solution that equips frontlines with the tools to learn, connect and get things done, visit https://www.axonify.com.

Transcript

JD Dillon (00:13):
Hello friends, how are you doing today? It's great to see you and welcome to the 50th—that's right, 50th—episode of In the Know, your 25-minute deep dive into the modern employee experience and what we can do to make it better. I'm JD from Axonify, and today's episode is all about airport lounges. Okay, it's not actually about airport lounges, but stay with me for a minute. You see, I'm a pretty simple no-frills kind of travel person. I just need to get where I need to go. I need to get there when I need to get there, and I try to do it as affordably as possible, but that means I have a hard time staying loyal to specific airlines. And no loyalty means no perks. And that's why the emergency exit row is my version of first class, but I'm actually less worried about what happens on the airplane and more focused on the airport side of travel because, after all, that's where things can usually get kind of iffy, especially if you find yourself delayed or the airline takes you to Jacksonville and you're trapped there for 12 hours before they figure out how to get you home.
(01:20):
A few years ago, I found myself stuck in Chicago for like six hours, and there I was in a sea of humanity at O'Hare sitting on the floor because there were just no open chairs available anywhere in that terminal. And I remember saying out loud to myself, there has to be a better way you've been there, right? So that is when I started researching airport lounges and I eventually found the credit card that got me lounge access to the airports that I visited the most. And now I'm that friend that you always want to travel with because I can usually get us a few comfy chairs and a light buffet before the flight. So I've been, as you can tell, really into airport lounges for the past five or six years. If you name a major US airport, I can give you the lounge lowdown pretty much by memory at this point.
(02:07):
But there's one part of this whole lounge experience thing that I didn't really start to think about until my recent trip to South Korea where I stopped in a lot of airport lounges along the way, and that's the people operating the lounge. Of course, I'm always nice to the people who work there. I clean up after myself. I try to stay out of people's way, but I never really sat back and thought about who these folks work for, what their experience is like as employees, and most importantly, how they get the help and support that they need to provide me with the kind of experience that makes going to the airport simple and enjoyable rather than uncomfortable and stress-inducing. Well, today we're going to find out together. Please join me in welcoming our special ITK guest Alison Lambert. Alison is the Director of Engagement Insights at Eurest, the leader in hospitality, food service and culinary excellence, setting the table for our nation's workforce and industries.
(03:00):
As part of Compass Group, Eurest and their 16,000 associates support a wide range of clients delivering 1.4 million restaurant-quality meals every day in corporate and office settings, including some airport lounges. Now, this is the point when I typically read the guest bio and usually, they've written that by themselves, but in this case, I'd like to read what Eurest wrote about Alison when she and her team were recognized with an award for best communications at our Axonify conference last year. To quote the UES Instagram account, Alison has been instrumental in creating meaningful connections within our workforce. She's transformed our organization, making it feel smaller and more closely knit. Alison's dedication to delivering, engaging and informative content has fostered comradery among our associates and played a pivotal role in creating a sense of community. Now, I don't know about you. My companies have never Instagramed something that nice about me, so that's why Alison is the perfect person to talk to about fostering an engaging employee experience in food service. So, Alison Lambert, you're In The Know! How are you doing?
Alison Lambert (04:01):
Awesome. I'm doing great. Thanks, JD. That was a great welcome. I appreciate that.
JD Dillon (04:06):
My pleasure. Thanks so much for being here. Now, this may be the first time some of our viewers and listeners are hearing about Eurest. Could you tell us a bit about the employee experience within your organization? So what types of work do people do? Where are they located? And most importantly, how do these team members impact the customer experience for your partners?
Alison Lambert (04:26):
Absolutely. Yeah, so our team members are, we essentially say that they fuel America's workforce. There are clients of ours from pretty much every industry that you can think of, whether it is financial institutions, the oil and gas industry, the airline lounges, as you mentioned, we are pretty much everywhere. So if you have dined in a corporate cafe, it's likely that we have served you. Our team members are really closely integrated with our client's team. So it is no greater praise than when somebody feels like our team members are part of their client family. They interact with these people day in and day out and really become part of the culture at each location where we serve.
JD Dillon (05:15):
Now, when we were chatting before the show, you mentioned this idea of demystifying frontline work, uncomplicating things so people can focus on the right stuff and then move forward. So, could you tell us a bit about that concept, and especially what companies can do to simplify the job to help people focus on delivering the types of customer experiences that you're looking for?
Alison Lambert (05:37):
I would really say to understand what their audiences are looking for instead of looking at what we want to share with them, what we want them to know, what is it that they want? What are they looking for? We use an acronym all the time, it's WITY, which stands for ‘What's Important to You?’ Whether we're doing a training for our team members or we are going into a client presentation, we're always asking what's important to you? What is important to that audience? What do they need versus what we want to share with them? So a lot of times that's really able to give us the tools to go back and deliver the messages that are really relevant for those team members.
JD Dillon (06:17):
And it's very easy to just become distanced from the everyday reality of work, especially when maybe you haven't done the job for a while, or maybe you've never actually done that job because you have a specialist role. You work in your particular function, you've worked in other businesses doing great work around this function, but if you're not close to and kind of knitted into what it's like to do the job every day, it can be really easy to do what you think is a great idea, provide what you think is awesome support or awesome information, but it just kind of misses the mark based on me as the frontline worker in foodservice and the problems I face every day, what my priorities are and just trying to get my job done. So I think I've never heard of WITY before. I think everyone needs to write that down right next to WIFM.
(07:02):
Talk a lot about WIFM. I don't talk nearly enough about WITY now. We talk about managers a lot on this show, and in my book, The Modern Learning Ecosystem, still very available at your favorite online book retailer, I reiterate my belief that managers are the most important people in the modern workplace because they have such significant influence on an employee's experience, especially a frontline worker. And then this idea was actually further reinforced recently by Gallup when their data showed that managers account for 70% of the variance in team engagement. So from your perspective, how do you see the role of managers in fostering a great frontline employee experience in your type of organization?
Alison Lambert (07:43):
Yeah, I completely agree with you. It really all starts with a manager. You can kind of think of a manager as a thermometer. If their temperature is really, really high, it's going to be a chaotic environment. It's going to feel like everything is really critical and everything needs to be done in a rush. But when a manager can lower that temperature, kind of keep it consistent, you're going to have a much better experience for the team members. They're going to have more positivity because everything doesn't feel so crazy. And I think if we take care of our team members and we provide them with a great experience, they're going to do the same thing for our guests. That all starts with the manager.
JD Dillon (08:22):
Absolutely. And I often say, especially again in frontline roles, frontline employees don't work for the company, they work for the manager because how often do they see the executive team, corporate team or these folks who are sending messages and establishing priorities and making decisions elsewhere? You see the person who hired you, the person who schedules you, the person who makes sure you get paid, the person who assigns your workflow every day. So making sure that we have that connection and understanding and support enabling managers. I think you see a lot of conversations, especially this year about the challenges managers have been facing for the past several years because it's always been hard to be a frontline manager. You're always putting out fires in one place or another, hopefully not literally. Figurative fires. But I think a lot of that kind of workload is coming to a certain point where a lot of managers are feeling broken down and burned out, and as you said, the story begins with the manager.
(09:15):
So if you're thinking about how do I improve employee engagement for me, how do I help my managers be able to do their jobs effectively so that I can lean on those managers to foster the type of workplace, community workplace experience that we need to be successful? So managers, everybody. Year of the manager, 2024. Now, another important part of the employee experience conversation, especially for a large distributed workforce is technology. But technology alone can't fix a broken employee experience, but it is an important part of the strategy given the need to reach a large workforce in your organization. So how do you see the role of technology in enabling employee engagement, especially when employees are supporting different brands and different industries and different types of workforces?
Alison Lambert (09:59):
Right. Yeah. The majority of our team members are deskless so they don't even have an email address that's tied to the company. The technology has been really crucial in creating that unifying environment where they all have a place where they can come together. It's really become part of our culture where they know that they have this place where they can go to connect with team members that they otherwise would have zero access to or they wouldn't even know that they exist. There could be a Eurest account right down the street, but because they're confined to that individual marketplace unless they go to support, they're really not going to leave those four walls of their own location because of just the nature of serving that particular client. So it allows team members in Florida to connect with those in Washington. In a lot of cases, they're running the exact same promotions, they're working toward the same initiatives, and they're able to share those best practices in a way that they otherwise would have no opportunity to be able to do so. 
JD Dillon (11:05):
Yeah, I think back to my time. I used to manage movie theaters and I wonder how many problems did I spend a lot of time solving with my team that were solved problems because I didn't realize in my location in Philadelphia or my location in Lake Buena Vista, Florida that someone in Seattle or someone in Chicago already figured this thing out? Or they had the spreadsheet that I needed that I had to build myself in order to track this part of work. So many things that I think we kind of create these artificial silos and now technology can help us overcome those by fostering that kind of collaboration. But the other side of this, what I think is interesting around technology, some people out there might be old enough to know what I'm talking about. You remember when getting an email was exciting and you're like, yeah, email.
(11:54):
Now, I just stare at the notification bubble on my phone and try to wish it down to an achievable level. But what's interesting when we talk about tech, especially when it comes to communication and training at work, is that it fosters these connections and it kind of breaks through these physical barriers, but then when it works, it can get overwhelming really fast as more and more people take advantage of this channel because suddenly they realize, oh, I can reach the entire frontline workforce now because there's an application in their pockets on their phones or on their devices. And when you think about how many different audiences are trying to reach a frontline workforce in food service, you've got the operations team, HR team, the marketing team, and of course, everyone believes their information, most important thing that people need to know right now. But there's only so much that as a frontline worker, I can pay attention to on any given day, frankly, I have a job to do and I can't keep checking my messages and spend a lot of time digging through this information. So how do you make sure that training and messaging are relevant for frontline workers so they can focus on what they're supposed to do every day?
Alison Lambert (13:03):
I think working with each individual group that comes to us and says that they want to communicate something, whether it's training or just a communication that needs to go, is helping them to identify what their goal is. Is it just an announcement? Is it a task that they need somebody to do? Do they have to complete specific training for compliance? Really understanding what that goal is behind what they're asking, and then determining if this is the right platform to share that information, or if there's another area that it would better suit maybe a newsletter or something like that. And really helping them clarify their goals, because a lot of times they'll come to us and they're like, oh, I hadn't really thought through what my goal is. I just want 'em to get that information out there. So that's really critical. Also, segmentation, taking advantage of that tool and realizing that every message doesn't have to go to every team member.
(13:56):
Making sure going back to that relevance, making sure that it's relevant for them if there's not something specific that they need to do, maybe deprioritizing it, putting it at a different point of the month instead of that really critical time when we know that they're going to have the time to get that completed. And then I also think shaking it up, keeping it fun. If every single message that goes out is a critical announcement, I think that that can get overwhelming for our frontline team members of like, oh, they want me to do so many different things. So kind of shaking it up and having some fun, having less of a corporate-y tone I think is helpful in relating to the frontline team members and helping them to see what it is you want them to do, but in a manner that is relevant and relatable for them.
JD Dillon (14:45):
So many great points. I think the biggest one for me is, one, what do you want people to do? You don't just want people to know this. Is there an action associated with this so we can prioritize the do and not the no side of the equation? And especially that idea of having multiple channels or multiple mechanisms that you can use because if everything's a billboard all of a sudden, do you notice the billboards when you're driving around at this point? Unless it's a really good billboard. I live in Orlando, so the billboards have animated characters on them, so sometimes they're really fun, but then there's the injury attorney billboards and I don't see those anymore. They're just part of the fabric of the environment. So if everything's a billboard that just becomes noise and it just slides right off of people. But as you mentioned, you have this channel that you use for these types of messages and this channel that you use for these types of messages and you keep all the senders consistent in your type of role.
(15:43):
Then as the employee, you're protecting my experience because now I know I go here for this, I go here for this, and then if you do have a dedicated channel that this is a priority, this is now, you need to see this. That stands out to me as an associate as opposed to what we've allowed email to become for corporate workers in a lot of cases, which is, I don't know if I need to read this email or not. And then when people start putting all capitals at the front of the email, it says urgent or must read or to do, but then everybody does it. There's no plan there. So I think that's what's critical, especially when you're a small team trying to support a very large distributed team. What's the plan? What's the consistency and how do you maintain that? Ultimately someone has to stand in between the people with all the information and the people who are just trying to do their job and need the right information at the right time.
(16:33):
But I think the other side of communication that often gets missed when it comes to frontline workers especially, is that it's a two-way medium. We need to get information to the right people, as you said. But then there's a tremendous amount of value to be gained from getting insights back from the frontline workforce. Again, the people who understand how to do the job and what the real problems are that they face every day as opposed to how corporate interprets what people need. But then a lot of organizations I've found they're concerned, some are downright afraid of what happens when you let people talk, when you give people a save button. Even if that app is internal and it's gated, it doesn't get outside in the world. A lot of legal and compliance teams will raise their hand and say, but what if people share the wrong thing or they say the wrong thing or what they say is not compliant information? So how do you overcome these concerns about what people might say in a two-way type of communication forum while still giving people the opportunity to share what they know in a communal workplace environment?
Alison Lambert (17:37):
I think our perspective is we'd rather them share it internally than externally. We would be happier to see that in that closed safer environment than on social media site, for example. We always say that these platforms are really a window to the field. Our frontline team members are going to share exactly how it is. They're going to take a picture of whatever we're asking them to take a picture of, and they're not going to pay attention to what's in the background or if they haven't done it correctly because they're proud of what they're showing you. And so I think looking at it from that perspective of this is a rare, unique opportunity. We can't be leadership support can't be everywhere all the time. So if they're able to breeze through the pictures that are being shared and just see what's going on out in the field, it's such a unique opportunity and kind of a gift that we have, and I don't think it can be taken for granted.
(18:38):
I think it also reveals a lot about what it is that they need. So it kind of goes back to the witty. If they're sharing something, is there something deeper there that we need to look into? Maybe they've misunderstood a message or they're asking for help in a roundabout kind of way. So taking those cues and acting upon them instead of them getting in trouble necessarily. Very rarely have we had to pull a post or something down because it was inappropriate. Their name is tied to it. They realize that. So I think just looking into it a little bit more and seeing what we can pull from that in a positive way.
JD Dillon (19:16):
That's always a big point for me, which is we're not talking about Reddit here, right? We're talking about an environment where people's names and faces are directly attached to the information they share. As someone who's been talking about communication knowledge sharing for 15-plus years at this point, as you said, I rarely run into a situation where people do silly or inappropriate things when they're directly tied to it. Where do those things often happen in those uncontrolled anonymous environments that proliferate when people don't have an alternative for how they can engage in work-related conversations? So I think that's a key point, especially when we're thinking about how do we influence the people who are concerned and the stakeholders and decision makers to realize that there's more value than risk to be gained when it comes to two-way communication. We talked about communication. We talked a little bit about training.
(20:06):
Another key part of an engagement strategy, something that often comes up in this conversation is recognition. And we've seen that research shows that 39% of frontline employees cite recognition as a leading driver of workplace happiness. Plus we just know that behaviors that get recognized get repeated. So at the same time, there are always two sides to the question. There's the good idea, then there's the risk associated. So there have been multiple instances recently, not going to specify or name anybody, but where we've seen recognition kind of go wrong, where companies make some questionable decisions in how they demonstrate appreciation for their workforce, especially their frontline teams, and then they go viral as a result. So how do you think about recognition in your workplace, and specifically how do you keep it as an authentic community-driven experience and not something that just feels like a miss or something that's overly planned and mandated from the corporate side of the world?
Alison Lambert (21:03):
We like to have recognition something that's always available. It's not just a certain time of year that they're allowed to recognize a team member. There's not a certain group that's allowed to be recognized. Anybody can be recognized and anybody can give out that recognition. That peer-to-peer is really impactful, and those stories are probably the most inspiring because they're really sharing those heartfelt recognitions, that organic kind of recognition. I don't think it can be, you don't want to force somebody, you have to recognize somebody every single month, check the box. It becomes really inauthentic. The manager, if they only have a small team, they're going to run out of people to recognize and they're going to have to be drumming up some kind of thing that they want to recognize them for. But I think encouraging our managers, encouraging our team members to have that mindset of recognition all the time in the back of their head of they're on the lookout for something that they can appreciate their team members for, that they're not moving so fast that they don't see the great things that they're doing that really contribute to the overall team and then sharing those stories.
(22:13):
I think that that is what reminds those who maybe aren't recognizing their team members as often that, oh, I saw somebody do something similar to this. I should recognize them. And then also reporting on it, making sure that our leadership team sees how much recognition is going on. We have a very competitive workforce, so if a manager is in a particular area of the company and they see that there's not been any recognition there, they don't want to be at the bottom. And so that might encourage them to recognize somebody as well.
JD Dillon (22:46):
Yeah, this idea of making recognition, especially a peer-to-peer community-based idea was something that we were really good at with at Disney, especially because we prioritized reading those guest letters so that even if it wasn't necessarily someone here, it was maybe from another area. People took inspiration from these extra things that people were doing to get recognized. And then even thinking back when I was a frontline employee, I remember the moments where I received some type of recognition from my peer group more than the manager, because you kind of expect that it's part of the manager's job. You kind of think that way. You're supposed to be watching me when I do a good job. You're kind of expected to say good job, but you often don't realize, I think especially on the frontline people are working with and working for their peer group more than they are the company. So when you foster that opportunity to recognize one another and how you're helping me or saving me extra effort, it took that extra shift for me that allowed me to take care of something I had personal that day. That's what this is really about. And then the manager stuff and the corporate stuff kind of adds on top of that.
Alison Lambert (23:47):
Yeah, you look at what a positive team is, like we were talking about earlier, imagine one with where it's peer-to-peer recognition, and that's part of their culture compared to one without it. And that team dynamic is going to be completely different because they're appreciating the little things that they're doing for one another.
JD Dillon (24:05):
Yeah, absolutely. And that's why I always say it's how does corporate enable the managers to foster that type of community rather than trying to, like you said, mandate, you have to do this or it has to be done this way. Because especially when you work in different brands and different types of organizations and then different teams, the recognition culture just changes. Even if you're in one company, it can be meaningfully different from place to place because the people are different. So the person who's on the ground, the manager in that environment needs to really understand the community that they've fostered here and what works best versus trying to do exactly what’s done elsewhere and just not matching the people that you have in that environment at that time. So there's one more thing I want to get to, which is the ROI side of things. So fostering an engaging, meaningful workplace experience is the right thing to do. A lot of businesses don't operate on altruism, so a lot of people are looking for the ROI on the investment in things like time, resources and technology in a busy workplace. So how would you say your investment in employee experience has impacted your results when it comes to the customer side of the business?
Alison Lambert (25:10):
Like I mentioned earlier, when we treat our people well, they're going to treat our guests well and they're with them all the time. So it's not like a typical retail environment where there are new guests coming in or customers every single day. A lot of times they're interacting with these people very, very frequently. And so they form these relationships with them that you wouldn't see in a normal foodservice establishment. And so one experience that we had is we utilized the tool to do a pre-service and share a diversity message once a week. And one of our managers read that, took it to heart and realized that there was a guest that he had that he knew celebrated this religious holiday that we had featured. And he took the time to speak to her about it. Say, oh, I know this is really important to you.
(26:00):
Will you share something about it with me in your experience? And the guest was just blown away because the manager took the time to connect with them on such a personal level and take that knowledge. And the manager was so thankful that he was able to pull that from a work tool and something that he just read in his every day. It wasn't anything he had to go outside and seek out. It was part of his regular cadence and so I think that those little things are, it's hard to quantify them, but they really do add up when our guests see that our people really do care about them and that they're there to support them and ensure that they're able to do the great things that their companies want them to do every day.
JD Dillon (26:45):
And it's that type of experience so many organizations are looking to foster, where you go beyond the transaction in terms of actually fostering a relationship. Especially in a business like yours. Like you said, where, and I can echo this as having worked in large companies that had dining service teams that, frankly, we looked at as part of the team, even though I knew they didn't work for the companies I worked for, but I saw them every day, we knew each other by name, and it was part of the experience that we were creating together. So again, Alison, thank you so much for joining us here on ITK, and sharing your award-winning employee experience strategies. To show our appreciation for your time and commitment to supporting our professional community, we want to make a donation to a charitable cause of your choice. So could you tell us a bit about the organization that you selected?
Alison Lambert (27:27):
Yes. We have recently partnered with Best Buddies International, which supports individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. So we are integrating them into our workforce and are really thrilled to announce that partnership. We did so a couple of weeks ago actually, so this is perfectly timed. So thank you very much.
JD Dillon (27:50):
No, thank you. And before we let you go, how can people connect with you and follow the awesome work you're doing with your team at Eurest?
Alison Lambert (27:55):
You can find us on our website eurest-usa.com, under the News section, or on Instagram @EurestUSA.
JD Dillon (28:04):
Awesome. Thank you again so much to Alison Lambert for sharing Eurest’s approach to fostering an exceptional employee experience. If you had a good time today, be sure to subscribe to ITK. Head over to Axonify.com/ITK to sign up for show announcements and reminders. You can also watch all 50 episodes of the show over on the Axonify YouTube channel or listen to In The Know on your favorite podcast app. Until next time, I've been JD. Now you're in the know. And always remember to ask yourself the important questions like, what do you call fake spaghetti? An IM-Pasta. I'll see you next time. 

In The Know is produced by Richia McCutcheon. Visual design by Mark Anderson. Additional production support by Andrea Miller and Tuong La. The show is written and hosted by JD Dillon. ITK is an Axonify production. For more information on how Axonify helps frontline workers learn, connect and get things done, visit Axonify.com.